


called out your name (but it was too late)

by arahir



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Unrequited Crush, listen to sad 80s ballads for four hours and write a crackship, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 11:26:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15533196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arahir/pseuds/arahir
Summary: Walk into the Garrison like—wait, what the fuck, is that Keith? Or: an old classmate watches Keith fall in love with someone else.It’s monumentally unfair that four billion miles distant, Shiro is still the only thing Keith has eyes for.





	called out your name (but it was too late)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [я звал тебя (но было поздно)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17482463) by [tsvyak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsvyak/pseuds/tsvyak)



> 1) go look at [this art](http://cherryandsisters.tumblr.com/post/176518754879/its-crack-ship-oclock) by mansi who mentioned jeith (jaith) to me at 6 ass o’clock this morning and i haven’t known peace since.
> 
> 2) the jeith is unrequited james at keith but there’s an iffy scene that blurs that line a little. it is nevertheless 100% sheith.
> 
> 3) SPOILERS FOR S7 PROCEED WITH CAUTION
> 
> 4) [this is the song i listened to the entire time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX09nRA-jE4)
> 
> 5) ALSO I HAVEN'T ACTUALLY SEEN THE FLASHBACK EPISODE. they might meet before the garrison. in this fic, they don't.

Keith joins the Garrison late.

It’s two weeks after the start of term and he comes in with a bang. Until that moment—and he can remember it with perfect clarity—James is top of the class. Top grades, top scores in the simulator. A born leader, they whisper in his reviews and he tries not to let it get to his head. This is what he’s wanted as long as he’s wanted anything. He’s got a wall of bad sci-fi movies and comics at home that parents tolerate and walls of posters. The middle ground is nebulous but the trajectory is locked in his mind like a one, two, three step dance: be the best, get into the Garrison, save the universe. Or—save something, at least.

Keith ruins everything.

He walks into class in a uniform that doesn’t fit, with hair that’s off regulation and looks like it needs a cut and a comb besides, and an attitude a mile wide. Shirogane is the one that introduces him, which means Shirogane is his sponsor, and they spend that first day speculating on what someone would have to do to get the attention of their local god. No one knows what school he’s from or who his parents are.

It doesn’t matter in the long run. Who he is is secondary to what he can do. He blows James’s scores in his first sim run. No—he doesn’t _blow_ them. That would imply effort. He kicks them out on a street corner and drives off with the entire Garrison on his arm. He makes it look effortless, like this is how everyone ought to pilot, and he’s an emissary from some better universe sent to show them all how.

No one misses Shirogane’s look of utter, glowing joy when Keith steps out of the simulator. “Incredible, Keith,” he says and sounds like he means it. Keith doesn’t look at any of them, doesn’t say a word, but the smile he aims at Shiro is blinding

The words run rampant through James’s mind for weeks after. The worst part is, it’s true. Keith is incredible. The only thing subpar are his grades, but after a few study sessions with Shirogane, those start improving, too. He works hard, pretends he doesn’t, wears an air of nonchalance, keeps to himself, and cares about no one—but Shirogane. They might as well be the only two people in the Garrison.

But James is the one he’s neck and neck with for the top of the class. He fights for it, starts taking meals in the library and gets special permission from Iverson to do extra sim runs after hours. Keith keeps pace with him without half the effort.

It’s the group simulations that start to shake things apart.

Keith pulls out of formation and makes a bullshit excuse. The entire class groans and finally, finally James knows what Keith can’t do: work on a team.

“Quit it, Keith. You’re going to get us in trouble,” he warns, part in honesty, part to have something over on him. They haven’t really spoken before, haven’t looked at each other properly.

Keith does it again and lands them all in the Garrison’s version of detention. It’s three weekends of sim runs, time James needed for studying—but Keith was probably going to spend it practicing jumps with Shirogane on their hoverbikes. For the first time, he feels something greater than annoyance with Keith, meaner than the fear Keith is going to overtake him.

“Thanks a lot,” he mutters.

Without missing a beat, Keith replies, “My pleasure.”

James sees red. “We all know the only reason you’re here is because of Shiro.” It’s a low blow—they’ve all seen his scores—but he wants to go lower. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with Keith and he’s an asshole and there’s blood in the water.

“I can outfly anyone in this building.” He looks at James, finally, eyes piercing.

James hates him. “Oh, yeah? Is that what Mommy and Daddy told you—”

The hit is so unexpected he isn’t sure what happened until he’s already on the floor and Keith is straddling him, aiming a second to the same cheek as the first—and then the pain catches up and there are instructors yelling and Iverson is pulling Keith off of him. Keith fights them like a demon, eyes locked on James. He gets a bruised cheek for his effort. James wishes he’d been the one to do it. On the walk to the disciplinary office he thinks: getting punched hurt worse than he thought it would. And: it’s his first time in trouble, they’ll probably call his parents, and he doesn’t have any excuse. He regrets his words and wishes he’d been meaner and he hates Keith and he wishes he’d gotten a shot in—just one.

Shirogane gets called in with them. The walk is dead silent. James feels like he’s going to his hanging and he hates Keith a little more each step of the way.

Shiro goes in first and they can both hear the conversation from outside. It’s embarrassing second-hand, a confirmation: Shiro is the reason Keith is there. There’s no victory in it. Keith keeps his head hung low, messy, ridiculous hair over his eyes. The uniform still doesn’t fit him right. He’s too small. James wishes Keith would look at him, once, just so he could have something to aim his glare at, but then Shirogane is walking out and it’s his turn to face the reaper.

The officer stares at him for a moment and then back at the file in her hands. _His_ file, he realizes. It’s miniscule compared to what must be Keith’s next to it.He wonders what someone has to do to get that much paper in it and then realizes he probably doesn’t want to know

“This is your first offense,” she says in monotone. “We won’t be notifying anyone. It won’t go on your permanent record.”

He has to resist the urge to visibly wilt in relief.

“But cadet—your language was inexcusable. We don’t judge our recruits on their situation at home. You’ve all made it to the Garrison on your own merit and this is a community. These are the people you’re going to be working with until you graduate. You’d better learn to get along with them.”

If she’s making a point that should make sense to him, it doesn’t. _Home situation,_ she said, and James isn’t the one with a problem making friends. “Excuse me, Sir—I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

She frowns and purses her lips. “You made a wisecrack about the cadet’s parents knowing he’s an orphan. This isn’t the right time to play dumb, Griffin.”

He is dumb. She’s right about that.

He walks out of the office feeling like a resurrected corpse. Shirogane and Keith are gone. He skips dinner because his appetite is gone and shows no sign of returning. Instead, he goes to the roof and lies on his back and lets the sunset burn his eyes while he settles into his bruises. He hates Keith for them, but he hates himself a little, too. In the distance, twin trails of dust rise off the pale hardpan desert, catching the light.

 _Three guesses who,_ he thinks, _and the first two don’t count._

 

* * *

 

Of course, Keith gets to see the Kerberos mission launch. Friends and family only.

The rest of them watch it from outside on the airfield below, squinting against the sun, trying to pick out the shuttle from the billowing steam and smoke of lift off. Five months, they say. The longest deep space mission ever, the possibility of finding alien life, nothing but a horizonless infinity of stars. One day, it’s going to be him.

There’s cheering and screaming and even the officers don’t look too sour, for once. When the last of the launch trail is starting to fade out in the sky, they file back inside. James lingers, wondering if he’ll be able to see it as a glittering speck on the horizon when it gets dark, knowing he won’t.

He’s not the only one still there when the crowd clears.

It takes a moment to place the man and when he does, something cold takes hold of him. Adam. Shirogane’s boyfriend. Or not. There was no rule Shirogane could only bring one person to the launch—but he must have.

_Friends and family only._

Later, he sees Keith in the mess. He’s eating alone in the corner, eyes fastened on the television above their heads as it projects the Kerberos mission specs and a split screen of reporters discuss the crew members. There’s a picture of Shirogane in the corner of the screen, young and handsome and smiling. It’s as if, for Keith, it’s the only thing in the room.

The same cold spreads through his chest again, so deep it almost feels like heat, so encompassing it almost feels like anger. There haven’t been any more disciplinary incidents. Keith’s gotten better at teamwork—but there’s only one person he takes his meals with and there’s only one person he spends time with outside of classes.

It’s monumentally unfair that four billion miles distant, Shiro is still the only thing Keith has eyes for.

 

* * *

 

Five months in, the mission reaches Kerberos. Communication is on a nine hour turnaround, but when news comes in about the safe landing, they act like it’s live and the entire Garrison is chaos for the next few hours. In the end, they call it a half-day and the mess hall hands out shitty cupcakes with moons and Ks and the Galaxy Garrison logo printed on them in frosting. Even Keith comes out of his shell to celebrate.

He lets James hand him a cupcake and a napkin and he even gives him a quiet, “Thank you,” and half a smile in return.

The next check in is good, and the one after that. It takes two days for communications to fail. It takes two days for everything to fall apart. People start whispering in the hallways when no message comes in. It’s probably mechanical failure, but someone starts joking about aliens and someone else says a little uncharitably that Matt Holt is the only person in the Garrison clumsy enough to trip over a wire and break the entire damn ship.

That night, James hears the rumor for the first time. He doesn’t know who started it and later he’ll try to find out, to no avail. He hears it in the locker rooms first.

_Shirogane was sick. He’s the last person they should have let pilot._

In a day, it’s on everyone’s lips. It’s in the hallway before class and in the mess hall at breakfast and whispered over the closed comms during their sim runs. Keith stops talking entirely. It’s like going to class with a ghost. James wonders if that means it’s true, if he knew, if he feared this from the start.

A week in, the Garrison starts preparations for a recovery mission. Five months later, the news comes in.

They announce it in front of the entire Garrison—line everyone up in the main hangar while Iverson explains what exactly went wrong and how and it’s regrettable, _but._ The moment the words _pilot error_ leave his lips, James turns to stare at Keith. It’s involuntary, but he’s not the only one that does it. Adam isn’t at the assembly which is understandable, but that leaves Keith the unfortunate focus.

It seems monumentally unfair they didn't tell him first, excuse him from attendance—anything. The whispers start echoing as soon as they’re dismissed, rising as they move to the hallway. Keith doesn’t move. He stays at perfect rest as if he's been ordered to it.

James should leave. He does, but he only gets as far as the hallway before he stalls, waiting for something. It’s silent inside until it isn’t. He can’t remember the last time he heard Keith yell. Iverson’s voice though—that’s easy to pick out, a common occurrence. He almost wants to walk back in but before he can there’s a feral scream and the sound of someone hitting the deck, hard—more yelling, after. Keith blasts out the door and past James where he’s trying not to look like an eavesdropper, but it doesn’t matter; Keith isn’t paying attention to him.

He stops a few feet away by the wall, bends and grabs his head with both hands, and screams. It’s a horrible sound with his rough voice and it’s more emotion than he’s shown since Kerberos left. He stays hunched there, staring down the floor. James tries to find words, but his throat is closed shut and he’s too shocked to move.

Before he can do anything, Keith rises and straightens out. He twitches when he sees he’s not alone and turns to James like he’s daring him to say something.

“It wasn’t— _pilot error,_ ” Keith spits at him. James shakes his head a little, backs up. He knows. Or—he knows Keith believes that.

He’s lost weight since the mission went silent. His hair has gotten longer, his skin a little tanner from afternoons he spends on the roof—anywhere but inside, with the rest of them. Something tight winds through his chest. Keith starts to turn, starts to walk away, but James doesn’t want him to leave yet. “Was he really sick?” James hears himself ask.

It’s the wrong question, his own curiosity getting the better of them both, and he regrets it instantly, desperately.

Keith’s face twists. “It doesn’t matter,” he chokes out. He swallows audibly, like it’s a separate action that takes energy to do, like there’s something stuck in his throat, and turns to face James fully. “He didn’t crash.”

 _You’re going to get punched again,_ he thinks. He’s earned it. Both times now, he’s earned it. He almost wants it.

Keith only takes one aborted step in his direction before his eyes get bright and then he’s turning and leaving and James doesn’t know it then, but that’s the last time they talk. The realization steals across him when he gets back to the ten person dorm room they all share that evening. The lights are still off, but enough sun gets in through the big window at the end of the room to illuminate what’s not there. Keith’s belongings aren’t just gone—his bed is stripped bare.

He imagines Keith tearing out of the Garrison on his hoverbike, tracing the same roads he used to ride when he and Shiro would go out. _Someday,_ he used to think. _Someday I’ll see them, too._ Someday he’d be best in his class and see the stars and maybe Keith would have a conversation with him that didn’t end in near-blood.

He stands by the window trying to decide if he can see Keith’s dust trail or if it’s his imagination until dinner is over and the other cadets start filing in.

They get a replacement for Keith’s position in the fighter class that same week. Not a replacement, though—not really. Not in truth. No one could replace him. Now James really is the best in the class. He watches his sim scores sit uncontested at the top of the rankings after they wipe out Keith’s and wonders if he could have stopped Keith if he’d said the right thing or made the right move.

It’s a moot point. They don't see Keith again. They don’t hear about him, either. Sometimes there’s speculation, but the hardest realization is that aside from a few choice people with a grudge and Iverson, whose bum eye is permanently out of commission thanks to Keith’s left hook, James is alone in his fixation. No one else watched Keith eat alone in the mess, no one else kept track of his scores, no one else watched him ride off into the desert.

No one else carefully cataloged the color of his hair or the shade of his eyes. No one else tracked the way he was starting to fill out his uniform. No one else could possibly be so stupid.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t really expect to see Keith again. The regret is one he learns to live with, and besides—the Garrison keeps him busy. James is their new prodigy pilot and there’s too much to do.

Radio chatter starts coming in and he’s enough in Iverson’s confidence to hear about it. There’s something they’re not saying, something they’re not telling the cadet class, but they all start to notice it on the expressions the officers wear after their weekly-turned-daily meetings. Six months after news of Kerberos’s failure comes in, something lands on Earth in an explosion they can’t possibly hide. It’s after hours; he watches with the other cadets from their room as the fleet of big tactical vehicles roar out toward the sight of the explosion, lights hovering above, smoke billowing.

So far distant, it looks like one of Keith’s dust trails against the night sky. It’s a stupid thought, but they all gather there by the window and watch it for hours. There are more explosions around midnight and more deployments. _Aliens,_ someone whispers and James thinks with a shudder that this time, they might be right. It takes them until that moment to realize two of their own are missing, but they don’t read too deeply into it.

The next day there’s a robot in the sky.

James doesn’t see it, but he hears second hand it looked like a cat. It’s too ridiculous to believe, even though every witness insists.

The Garrison goes on lockdown and nothing after that is the same. The robot leaves, but the worry stays. Training ramps up, the officer’s occasional looks of concern become permanent, and there’s only so much the cadet class can take before they all start to crack a little. _Aliens_ goes from a funny theory to a literal fear that keeps them up at night. And then Sam Holt comes back and there’s no keeping a lid on it.

They call another assembly.

“We’re not prepared,” Iverson tells them. “We’ve tried to be, but we can’t hope to win against what’s coming.” In his gruff voice it almost sounds kindly. He always makes good things sound and horrible things almost tolerable. “But we’re still going to fight.” And the he presses a button on the remote James didn’t notice he was holding and a video projects behind him, straight out of one of the cliche space flicks he spent his whole childhood memorizing. It’s a fleet of ships the color tempered steel and only scale for how big they are is the pinprick lights drawn in lines across each one—what must be windows, he realizes.

A hush goes over the room. He imagines Keith staring up at it, that look of bored defiance in his eyes, so close to arrogance but with enough skill you thought hell, maybe he could handle it easy as that. James isn’t sure if he hated that about him or envied it—or both.

They start doing live fire exercises the next day. As part of the fighter class, he trains more than he sleeps and no matter how much he does it doesn’t feel like enough. The day the Galra arrive, he knows it wasn’t.

The ship appears like a haze in the sky and descends slowly. They have warning, but they have to watch its progress from the airfield, waiting because they can’t do anything else. It’s bigger than the Garrison—and laughably so. The closer it gets, the darker it gets, the bigger it gets. It’s the size of city and it blocks out the sun. They have two hundred fighter jets on site and half as many pilots. They’re going to die.

The routine of take off is ingrained by now and there’s something to be said for muscle memory. They fly in formation, old drills coming back and get in one good strafing run at the side of the ship before its fighters deploy. It’s not a scratch. They could buff it out in the wash, he thinks. They group up again and wing away, but he can feel himself shaking, can almost feel the rest of the team’s nerves over the silent comms. Iverson chimes in with praise but it’s hollow. and has a sudden waking vision of Keith on his left in those weeks of drills, always eager, soaring off away from them. He wonders if they could find him now, if anyone thought to check, because they need everything they’ve got and Keith was the best of them.

The Galra have them on numbers and tech and skill. In minutes it goes from the vague hope of a not-total loss to a massacre. His left-most wingman gets taken out by a blast of violet light and they fall apart the way they were told and taught never to. He wings over the Galra cruiser and manages to take one of the enemy fighters by surprise, but it takes all his firepower to bring it down and he doesn’t have that many shots left.

His terrified mind clings to the oddest things. Keith could have taken it, he thinks, half in anger, half in desperation. Keith would have found a way through all of this—he’d win and make it look like he could have done the same with a bit of twine and pocket knife.

Totally by chance he takes out another, pinning it up against the side of the ship and then another in short succession, and then adrenaline starts to get the better of him. He dodges in the wrong direction, has to veer back under the cruiser and ends up right in range of the cruiser’s main guns. The evasive maneuvers they drilled are inadequate for the task at hand; it feels like walking out of second grade spelling test and into a calculus exam—but his life depends on not fucking it up.

“Griffin—you’ve got two on your tail. I can’t get a clear shot,” someone says. Their voice is too tinny to identify—or maybe it isn’t and it’s just his nerves. His heart is racing in his chest. They’d pull him out of a simulator for bad vitals, if this was one, if they could.

He drops, swings around as fast and tight as he can, making his gut lurch and his head go hazy, but he can’t turn on a dime like the Galra ships can. Sun glares off one of them; he catches it in the corner of his eye. There’s no way he’s going to shake them.

“Griffin.”

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” he screams over the comms, volume proportional to his fear because he most certainly does not have anything about this fight. The Galra fighters move like air resistance can’t touch them and James’s ship feels like it’s missing an engine with how slow it is by comparison. He’s going to lose.

He shakes one, but it leaves him open.

He sees the shot coming before it hits, sees the purple streak through the sky toward his jet and there’s no hope of dodging. It’s a direct hit that rocks him. Smoke floods the cockpit; he gets a second of momentum before everything in his vision redlines. All he can hope to do is glide to ground, but then he realizes with absolute terror that there’s smoke in the cockpit because the shot tore one of his wings off and busted the main body. There’s no gliding anywhere in half a ship. It’s a miracle the shot didn’t take him out with it. The jet tilts in free fall and he gets a great view of the canyon he’s going to die in.

James can’t help but think: this is a moment we could have used a decent pilot.

As he falls, he wonders if Keith is down there, sitting on his hoverbike on some cliff, watching them fail.

He closes his eyes at the same moment something slams into the side of the cockpit and when he opens them, he can’t tell what he’s looking at. It’s the inside of some machine, lights spinning in front of him, but he’s not in freefall anymore and that’s what counts. His ears are ringing and his heart is rushing, but his radio is down so it wouldn’t matter if someone was trying to talk to him anyway. It’s either an enemy ship or not and he can’t be more dead than he was.

Maybe he is. Maybe that’s what this is.

It deposits him on the ground with something like care. As it soars away, he can finally see what it is: a robot, massive in size, black and white and gold. As he watches, it shifts and stretches and grows wings that glow, even against the bright blue of the desert sky, and then it flickers out of existence. The Galra cruiser explodes like someone shot a shell right through the heart of it, but no one has a weapon that big and he didn’t see anything touch it.

The robot materializes on the other side of it. At this angle, he can tell what it looks like. It really is some kind of cat, tail and all. A cat with wings.

There are five. They’re different colors and sizes and almost too fast to follow—but the one with wings is the biggest and fastest. He loses himself watching them until the Garrison’s emergency crew pull him out of the ruined jet.

The Garrison is in chaos when they arrive, but dread isn’t seeping through the walls anymore. There’s an air of excitement in the way people are whispering. He stops an officer as she’s rushing by, but before he can ask she sees his uniform and lays a hand on his arm. “We got backup,” she says kindly, as if that’s an explanation, and then she’s gone.

_Backup._

He wants to take another fighter up, but they keep him grounded. Shock, maybe, they think, but at minimum taking a hit like that might damage something and he took out three. That’s—nothing, but it’s something. It’s enough, they tell him. Someone tells him the robots are called Voltron, but it sounds too ridiculous to be real. In one ear and out the other. He falls asleep on the floor in the mess and dreams of falling until someone wakes him up with a shove.

“We won, man. The cat whatevers are landing. We should go watch.”

James follows the crowd outside in a trance. It can’t have been more than a few hours; it’s still bright out and he’s still dead on his feet. It’s just the first fight, he hears people whispering, but with this they can win. They have a chance, at least.

The robots are lined up in the airfield, like a set of statues transplanted from a more ancient land—but alive. They move. James only has eyes for the black one. He tracks it with dull-eyed exhaustion as it bends and its mouth opens—the same jaws that saved him, he realizes—and deposits its pilot on solid ground.

The man pulls off his helmet and a cascade of black hair falls over his shoulders. He shakes the sweat out of it and looks up at them all, smiling.

“That’s Keith,” he hears someone whisper and realizes seconds later that it was him and it is. Somehow, impossibly, Keith. His hair is longer and his jaw is stronger. He’s taller. He might even be as tall as James—or taller. The red looks good on him.

He wants to laugh. Keith could fix this, he’d thought—and he had. The arrogance is gone though. His confidence is the quiet kind that James always tried for but never got the hang of achieving with quite so much ease.

A man walks out behind him in black armor and peels off his helmet with his one hand. White haired, scarred, tall. James doesn’t recognize him until Keith turns to him. There’s only one person Keith looks at like that. For once, the coldness—the jealousy—that’s plagued him for years won’t stick. They look like opposites, two perfect halves a more perfect whole.

His eyes stray back to Keith and settle there. He lets himself look. It can’t have been a year. No one could change so much. The jealousy is gone, but something else settles into his chest in its place, hollow and wide. He settles into it leaning back in the shade along the wall of the Garrison while everyone greets them and laughs and oohs and ahhs. Even Iverson is in a rare good mood—after his initial shock, which he hopes someone got a video of. Nothing like watching the boy who punched you out ride back in with bells and banners and save your ass.

Iverson and him might be the only two people in the place that know what that feels like now.

“Doesn’t Keith look different?” a girl from his comms class asks. She’s blushing lightly.

James gets it. Keith keeps brushing through his hair with his gloved hands and smiling and moving. It’s not really far. He wants to sit and bury his face in his knees and not think about the pain beating behind his ribs anymore. He’s happy Keith is back and he wishes he remembered how to hate him.

He hasn’t by the end of the day and the party goes all night. Every second hand tidbit of information about Keith makes it worse and part of him is still shaking from the fight. He drags himself to the showers after midnight when the lights off and he’s sure they’ll be mostly deserted. It almost works. He almost makes it out before anyone can catch him.

It’s just—the person who does is the last person in Garrison he wants to see one-on-one. Maybe the last person on Earth. Ironic, since it turns out he hasn’t been until today.

Keith is alone. He’s stripped out of his white armor, dressed in nothing but the black suit underneath it, shoulders accentuated in red, long arms pulling back his hair as he reaches for the zipper. James thinks about not saying anything, hiding by the door, letting it play out—or leaving. That would be the smarter thing to do, but as soon as he thinks of it and starts to turn, he realizes it’s a coward’s move.

Keith spots him a moment later and then it’s too late, anyway.

He half-turns, a question in his eyes. James tries to think of an excuse, wonders why he needs one, and settles on something true. “I wanted to say thanks.”

Keith turns the rest of the way. His chest and abs are defined with lean muscle. He’s bizarrely beautiful. “You’re welcome,” he offers, quietly.

“No, you—at the start of the fight. You caught my fighter. I thought I was dead.”

He winces when realization dawns on Keith’s face, his mouth parting slightly. “That was you?” He grins. “That was some flying.”

Praise is worse than silence. Remember when we fought. _Remember when I asked you about Shirogane a few minutes after you found out he was dead._

Well. Not dead anymore.

He nods and makes to leave. “Thanks. And thanks, again.” The shower can wait. What else would he even say? There’s no good way to admit he missed Keith when he didn’t have a right to it to begin with. And if he has to stay and watch Keith strip out of what looks like black spandex, it’s all over.

“Wait, wait.” James turns back to him, dread dripping down his spine. “Look—” Keith smiles to himself, a little chagrined, “—you’ve been watching me all day.”

His mortification is so complete is freezes his blood in his veins. He has, he realizes. The entire day after his near-fall is a haze of trying to pick out Keith’s hair in a crowd, trying to reassess the length of his limbs, trying pick out all the differences between this demi-god and the scrappy kid that beat him up on the floor of a hangar.

Keith’s brow quirks, waiting for some answer or explanation, as if James has any to give. “I just—” He searches his own mind, panic kicking up in earnest. “I wanted to say thanks and apologize,” he blurts out and is shocked to find it’s at least a little true. “I was a dick.”

It must come out wrong. Keith frowns and him and swallows, jaw working. He could cut a man with the line of it. “I know, but—”

“No, I really—I was an asshole. I'm sorry.”

His eyes are still on Keith's pecs. They're a black hole and they're right there, right below the hollow of his throat which is still distractingly long. It was when he was a cadet, too. James got good at pretending he hated it—along with the hair. He can feel his blush.

Keith stalks toward him a step, head cocked now, and this is it, this is how he goes out. There's terror in the realization but also an inappropriate joy bubbling up with it. He takes an involuntarily step back and hits the wall behind him, hard. Keith doesn’t stop until he has him bracketed against the wall with one arm above his head and then he leans in until they're only separated by inches. James realizes years too late he has no idea what color Keith’s eyes are. Blue? Purple?

He closes his eyes when they become a blur. Keith's bangs brush his forehead and cheek. “You really weren’t. Or, I was too. And you’re welcome.” Keith whispers against his lips, the barest brush of air. And then he pulls away, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, cheeks dusted red. At least that’s two of them.

Keith leaves him there, walking toward the showers. He stays against the wall for minutes.  No one would believe him if he told them, but who would he tell? Maybe that was the point—one final, small thing to have over on him. Or maybe not. Maybe it was something kinder. Maybe this was some kind of hello and some kind of good bye, wrapped into one.

Later he’ll kill himself trying to remember if their lips actually touched. Later, he’ll watch at a distance as Shiro puts his hand on Keith’s shoulder and looks at him with stars in his eyes. Later he’ll think, _I never had a chance._

But maybe he wanted one.


End file.
